Customer Reviews

Amarok

5 star:		(52)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I must be one of the few people who loved this album on first listen, but I came to it with a looong MO listening history. My first listen to the original Tubular Bells (many moons ago) was similar to others' first listen to Amarok...mainly: "Huh?" I didn't dislike TB...it just seemed boring and repetitive to me. I shelved it and came back to it a year or so later and was stunned; how could I have wasted a year of my life NOT listening to this??? It is true that you grow into appreciating music that you might not be ready for yet; it can take some time. Amarok is just such a work.

You don't play this album as background music while you eat dinner or read a book or pay the bills; you put this album on, sit down and LISTEN to it - closely (headphones and closed eyes highly recommended!). When the album is finished, you feel you've been on a journey and have just returned, and have some things to think about.

This is easily MO's most brilliant work. It is also his most hilarious, with laugh out loud bits occurring when you least expect them - a striking example is during one of the most exquisitely emotional guitar bits (about 42 minutes into the piece) where MO is busy elevating the guitar to divine instrument status in a fantastic passage and everything just cuts out - "Happy?" - and then starts up again. LOVE IT! It is not his most outrightly beautiful work - that is reserved for Incantations, Ommadawn and the like - although there are ravishingly beautiful passages scattered throughout, as well as ear-splitting dissonances and discordant blasts (your speakers WILL get a work-out with this one!). There are more enchanting melodies (MO's strongest creative trait) and more pure sounds made into music on this one album than you can shake a Sailor's hornpipe at. He just tosses them out one after another; most other musicians would make entire albums out of just a few of these (and still not do them justice).

Fa-fa's and footsteps, mandolins, toothbrushing and ahhh's, drums and chanting, cash registers, nickolodeons, bagpipes, choirs and cavemen, guitars of every shape and sound, banjos, organs, pianos, people mumbling, Margaret Thatcher dancing, bells...and the ending - the ending that is a dissertation on how to do endings. Each time it wells up and you think this is the transcendent ending and the CD will be over...you're wrong. It goes on...delightfully, blissfully, zanily...well, what can you say? These are words - they don't do the music justice.

"Happy?" Indeed! Above all...this is a happy, warm work. A master at his most brilliant and creative best, and having a romping good time at it. Buy it, play it and if you don't get it...come back to it again at a later time. As the story in the CD booklet says...

"I hear it has voices to speak of things we cannot speak of..."

"I am told that when men hear its voice, it stays in their ears, they cannot be rid of it. It has many different voices: some happy, but others sad. It roars like a baboon, murmurs like a child, drums like the blazing arms of one thousand drummers, rustles like water in a glass, sings like a lover and laments like a priest..."

"I have heard it says only one word..."

"I was told it depends on how you listen."

I remember the day I bought this album. I was sitting in my van, popped in the CD and eased back waiting for one of my favorite moments in life: the first listening of a new Mike Oldfield album.

Well, it started off a little rough, but I thought, "Oh, you know, sometimes it takes a while for a new Mike O. album to sink in, OK, no problem..." But then, it got more and more troublesome. A good idea would start out and then, after a minute or so of development, Whoosh!, it was gone, to be replaced by another, and then the same thing would happen again.
I was severely bummed! So much so that I stopped the CD, took it out and drove home very annoyed.

Well, it stayed on my shelf at home for about 4 or 5 years without a listen. Then one day I thought, what the heck, maybe miraculously it has improved with age. I fished it out, popped it on and, WOW!!!! It was like a curtain being pulled before my eyes. Everything about the music seemed perfect and made sense, delicious, adventurous, humorous, perfect sense!

I couldn't believe this was the same record I had despised many years earlier. I still can't explain it except for this phrase:
"When the listener is ready, the masterpiece appears."

Its almost like there's this secret code in the music, and if your ears can't seem to unlock it, it sounds just like random blahblah. That this was all the work of one man is truly the work of genius in our time.

Amarok to me is like a soundtrack to someone's day; from dawn to dusk. the music represents little moments from a day in which many things happen to us, and these all become portrayed by music vignettes.

Think of yourself walking down a street and how your attention shifts from this to that; the sound of a jackhammer; then, the sharp call of a bird; the rumble of a motorbike; the wind rushing through the tops of trees; and on and on, all of these sounds drifting in and out; a collage; a tapestry; a quilt of music woven from many different patterns, but all stitching into a framework that suddenly takes shape and ultimately brings forth the most delicious composite musical experience in which you are challenged, changed, soothed, awakened, stretched, jarred, amazed...at the end you know you have lived this music!

This is one of the most unique and satisfying albums I have in my collection. It is a classic that defies definition and that is why it is great. It is not just music; it is LIFE!

Mike Oldfield's masterpiece was never a hit. No one I know has ever heard it. This is probably due to a cheesy cover and the harsh beginning of the CD, but don't let that scare you, there's more yet to come.

This record has very haunting melodies, and Mike's passion for layering guitars: 6-string, 12-string, any-string on top of each other is just great. Some passages make my hair stand straight up.

It's also a production gem. Some parts are really low and mellow, only to be interrupted by a orchestra hit, keeping you alert throughout the record. Some parts are grand and has a lot of sound, without sounding too much.

There's only one track on the CD. Mike's craftmanship with weaving melodies, using well put pauses and previously used chords holds the track together.

So, if you like to whistle along to beautiful melodies, get scared off the chair and experience music made out of traditional guitars as well as strange instruments as Northumbrian Smallpipes, buy this record.

Mike is free to do whatever he wants. And he does. This album is funny, challenging, insulting, gorgeous, crazy and violent. Many artists have used noises, sounds, exotic instruments and arrangements in the past. But Mike Oldfield isn't using these as the main feature of the album. The music is brilliantly written, with defiantly simple, but utterly gorgeous melodies in every place. It is rich and touching, emotionally resonant, and it is able to deflate itself at strategic moments with Margaret Thatcher immitations, dissonant bits and messages in Morse code. The music is sincere and genuine, and highly replayable. There are many ways to listen to this music, and every single one of them is highly rewarding. Truly a masterpiece: an untrivial, gorgeous album that challenges insults and mocks its listeners. It could be Oldfield's own "Trout Mask Replica", in fact, and is every bit as amazing as Captain Beefheart's tour-de-force, if not even more.

"This record could be hazardous to the health of cloth-eared nincompoops. If you suffer from this condition, consult your Doctor immediately."

That appears on the cover notes of Amarok. It's no less true today, although there are more musicians releasing more music that follows along the path that Mike Oldfield was on when he wrote it. If you only like pop, it's probably too dense.

I thought Tubular Bells was kind of OK, but that was all, really.
The first MO recording I bought was Boxed, because I could get Hergest Ridge and Ommadawn along with some other music he did with David Bedford.

I always rated Ommadawn the best of his music until Amarok. Amarok is a progression; different, great, but not necessarily better than Ommadawn.

As before, most of the instruments are played by Oldfield, with a few exceptions by regular Oldfieldites such as Clodagh Simonds, Paddy Moloney, and Julian Bahula.

It might sound like an ambigous bad mix of different sounds, with some separate themes jumping in momentarily and leaving in the same way. But that's only likely on the first few hearings, or later if you're one of the nincompoops previously referred to. Sorry, but that's the way it is ;)

There are some great short 5 minute segments, but to separate them would be to ignore the fact that they are parts of the whole.

I don't believe you can let the music do its job without paying attention to the way you listen to it.
Don't prepare dinner with it as a background. Sit in a quiet room with no distractions. Put on the headphones - a good pair, not the $50 off the shelf variety, because a good pair will really make a difference.
Sit back, and listen.

I bet you could make love with it in the background, though. Now there's a thought......if only. Woah.

What you will hear, if you give it a chance, is a piece of music that's been composed almost in a 'classical' way.

It's like a meal. It has ingredients that are different alone, but together make something unique. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts. But that's usually the case with Mike Oldfield, even for something like the Mt. Teide track on Five Miles Out.

There are themes that gradually surface, sink back down, and then rise up after 20 minutes with a sparkle that wasn't there before. And it happens the other way round, too.

There are mumblings in the background that, when you hear them and recognize them, tie all the segments together. Once you've got to that point, you'll never hear the music again as a collection of different things.

It has samples (made by Oldfield from his own playing, not pre-recorded commercial ones), sounds that people don't call music so much (toothbrushing, walking, phones, things falling onto the floor, etc), but all those things had already been done by more people you can think of (Pink Floyd, Beatles, Hans Werner Henze, etc).

There is the usual signature Oldfield guitar method, with stabs and runs that you might expect.

A dash of Celtic, a measure of African drumming.
Some flamenco guitar, some funky rhythms.

Some nonsense lyrics. (He always said the Ommadawn stuff was made up by Clodagh, but Omadhaun is an old Irish word meaning simple or foolish.) The Amarok vocals are not meant to be understood as vocals are usually in modern popular music. They aren't songs, they don't have some romantic meaning. They are a part of the music. Sounds, only, not words. The meaning is in the music.

There are no revelations of divine truth on this, no social commentary (aside from Janet Brown's Thatcher impression, which might be a bit strange sounding for people who never lived during her time).

The Thatch.... there is a lot of humor in Amarok. One part ends, and before the next begins there's a one-second pause. In that single second you can just make out Oldfield going "uh" in tune with the two parts. Corny, but funny. He might be laughing at himself, but I think he just plain enjoys what he does. There are so many little pieces that make the work into a whole. It must have been a hell of a job to put together, time consuming.

Worth every second, Mike me old mate.

If you don't get it from the first, Amarok is something that will grow on you with more listening.

Maybe it's the kind of music I've heard so much of, but after a couple of listens I found the melodies coming back and wanted to whistle them. Maybe that's not such a good idea for me to do. But I never did find it very difficult to enjoy.

If you don't like it, you can always turn it down or sell it.
But if you like music with a bit of something more than the usual, then you will most likely love Amarok. It's not perfect. Nothing is., But 16 years on, it still rocks.

Also known as "Ommadawn Part 2", "Amarok" takes a lot of melodic, harmonic and instrumental cues from its predecessor, while at the same time adding and updating the overall sound. The album doesn't flow quite as smoothly as "Ommadawn", but that isn't a bad thing--all kinds of charming breaks, like the sound of him brushing his teeth or that of a Margaret Thatcher impersonator, come in to keep you on your toes. But basically, the music here is like than on "Ommadawn", (chanted vocals, trebly electric guitar, Irish folk interludes and all), so if you liked that one, "Amarok" is a must have. Disregard the guy below who says this is "boring mood music"; obviously some people have shorter attention spans than others, and if anything, "Amarok" is designed to wake you from your slumber. Perhaps he was expecting Metallica, an infinitely more boring and repetitive group...

DO NOT! Use this CD to initiate the unitiated to Mike. This is obviously a love it or hate it piece, and it may only work for those who have listened to Mike music for years. On first listen, through the first 5 minutes, my reaction was "what has Mike done to himself and to us with this nosie? I mean, "Happy, Happy, Happy"...what's that all about"? Then I realized, behind all the initial, unintelligible caterwalling, guitar screaming and hammering, Mike was laying the groundwork for one of the most engaging, and fun, musical rides I've ever experinced. My only regret is, Amarok is almost 10 years old and I just recently got it, thanks to the internet and Amazon (it's very hard to keep up with Mike in the U.S. heartland). It's difficult for me not to listen to Amarok when given the opportunity. My wife is also a long-time Mike fan (we initially got together 12 years ago when we found that we shared a very strong common interest in Ommadawn...it seems nobody else in this part of the world knows who Mike is). She won't give Amarok a second listen. Mike runs the gamut on Amarok with his guitars, from soft, lilting riffs, to energetic PopEye the sailor and flamenco leads, to screaming guitars vitually unparalled in his entire repertoire. If an instrument has strings and can be plucked, you'll hear it on this CD. The first two(of three) climactic guitar crescendos Mike uses to try and end this ride make the short hairs on my neck stand straight up, every time. They beat, hands down, the guitar climaxes of Ommadawn's Part 1, Platinum's Part 4 (for me, that's saying something). Only Ascension off Songs of Distant Earth affects me as strongly as the climaxes of Amarok. If you're a Mike fan, my humble advice is..Get Amarok, listen to it, and make up your own mind what you think of this work, but be prepared to get lulled, rocked and kicked square in the teeth for the 60 minutes it takes to ride this one out. It's unconventional, even for Mike, but in my opinion, his best work. I'd be interested to know how Mike feels about this particular creation of his. It sounds like he put his heart and soul into it but, with his talent, it could be something he just squirted out to meet a contract deadline and it just happens to work for some of us.

As I remember, I bought this cd album in the summer of 1990. Since I'm a HUGE Mike Oldfield fan I had been anticipating for this album for a long time. However, I was into his more 'pop' or vocal projects such as Crisis, Discovery, Five miles out, or Islands.
The very first time I put it on and heard that harsh and violent beginning I started feeling confused, uncomfortable, actually scared of what I was listening to. To cut a long story short, I popped it out and went to take a swim in the sea!
Every single time I tried to listen to it I invariably hesitated in the end, and, eventually, I would instead put on a Madonna album or Islands. That was actually the end of my costant attempts to make up with Amarok....At least, that's what I thought...

Christmas 1991: After being silly bored with listening to Vogue. Sadeness and to a lot of Sade and since I couldn't find anything else to play I thought...what the hell...why not?

This is when my life started changing . I was instantly put into a trance from which I could not escape. At least, not untill the cd text showed 60:02 min/sec. which marked the end of that daydream.

Now, Every single time I listen to Amarok, again and again, I find it more breathtaking, more divine.

Give your self the chance to experience this. I did. It may have took a bit longer than it should, but eventually I did....

Don't buy this CD if you are searching for easy-to-listen music. Nothing you've heard before can be compared to this piece of music, be prepared. This is a true original masterpiece and needs attention and good ear to be enjoyed. I have to say I was disappointed at first, but it grow stronger as long as one listen and understand.

Hmmm.... Errr.... Where do you start? You'll have noticed by now that I haven't given this album a full complement of stars, mainly because, although I like it, and think it's one of Oldfield's best works; I can guess -and see- that there are equally those who can't get their heads around it at all.

Small wonder. Amarok is one of those albums you either love or hate. It's seemingly random developmets and destructions of melodies has clearly been carefully planned, but it's up to individual taste whether you like the results or not. The incredible diversity of the instruments and lack of linear progression within the single 60 minute track makes the Oldfield virgin's head spin, and even those who can understand its constuction can be left bewildered at times be the sheer scale of it all. Amarok is a staggeringly good album; if the listener is willing to accept its near Tangerine Dream style construction. However, this cannot be recommended for those who've never bought an Oldfield album before. If that applies to you; try The Songs of Distant Earth if you like your samples and electronics, or Omadawn if you want "New Age", whatever that might be. You'll need to be heavily into Mike Oldfield before you can truely appreciate this work. But, believe me, it's well worth the effort.